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Literary Review
Don't shoot the critic
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Nobody likes bad reviews but honest reviewers are like doctors who must sometimes recommend radical surgery. Though it may seem cruel, it keeps the literary community alive and vibrant in the long run, says MANJULA PADMANABHAN.
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SOME people remember their first kiss; I remember my first hate-mail message. It appeared in the Sunday Observer in the mid-1980s, Bombay, in response to my comic strip "Double-Talk". I remember feeling convulsed with anguish and concern. I went to Vinod Mehta, founding editor of what was then India's first Sunday newspaper, to ask if he wanted me to terminate the strip. His advice was very practical. He said it was entirely up to me, but from his experience, "when you're standing up in the coconut-shy, you must expect to get hit."
His point was that anyone who voluntarily enters the public arena needs to develop a thick skin. It remains amongst the most cherished bits of advice I have received. My strip continued and so did the hate-mail. I soon learnt to laugh as I plucked the weekly ration of poison-tipped barbs out of my rhino-hide.
I am reminded of this advice whenever I hear tales of authors struggling to defend their books against the possibility of negative critiques or of their bad reactions when less than flattering reviews are published. It is of course the most natural thing in the world for an author to feel defensive or outraged when a book has been savaged. Sometimes, when a reviewer has made factual errors, an author may be justified in writing to clarify his/her position. But to either attack the reviewer or to block honest and unbiased critiques is surely immature.
Literary critic and columnist Nilanjana Roy recalls a first-time author whose book was starting to do the rounds. Initially she tried to influence the choice of reviewer and when that didn't work, attempted to have the review modified. "It wasn't even very harsh," says Roy. "Overall, it was quite positive. But it did point out some of the obvious weaknesses and inconsistencies of the book." Another first-time novelist but mature poet, was bitterly resentful about the indifferent reception her book received. Her absolute lack of perspective in regard to her own book was puzzling, says Roy, "she told someone she'd NEVER forgive me!" One author telephoned at 7.30 in the morning just in order to tell Roy she deserved to be horse-whipped. And another took to sending poison-pen postcards.
Geeta Doctor, art critic, travel writer and literary reviewer, remembers trashing a book in the Indian Review of Books. The author responded with a letter to the editors in which he claimed Doctor was too sexually inexperienced to appreciate his writing! Another one accused her of being a "frustrated, middle-aged house-wife". A third complained that she had a personal animosity towards him and would simply never give his work an even-handed appraisal. "An author's best option when a book has received a bad review is NOT to react," she says. It doesn't matter what has been said in the review, how damaging, how unfair: an author who comes out with guns blazing in defence of his or her own work inevitably sounds like a brat insisting on applause for having scribbled on the bathroom mirror. Readers who may have forgotten a review when they first read it will return to look at it again when an author cries "Foul!" The louder the complaint, the more entertainment for all, with very little sympathy to spare for the author's wounded feelings. So why do they do it?
The main offenders are first-timers, says reviewer and literary editor, Shoma Choudhury. "They're insecure," she says, "they don't have the long-term perspective of more seasoned authors. They've written their first book and they expect it to be an instant best-seller, along with all the classics." But not all first-time novelists have fragile egos. Ruchir Joshi, whose first novel The Last Jet-Engine Laugh received good notices in India, says he prefers incisive criticism to immoderate praise. A documentary film-maker whose background in reviewing includes film and theatre criticism, he says the potential for vendetta is high, within the cramped confines of a small literary pool. However, he says, "In the long run it evens out." Reviewers become reviewees and vice versa. In the end, the tie-breakers are the books themselves. Even the most powerful reviewer cannot damage a truly good book, nor a whole battalion of cheerleaders make a masterpiece out of a bad one.
Mukul Kesavan, author of Looking Through Glass, historian and reviewer, says, "Writers now are so savvy." They sell their work with all the zeal of hot-shot car-salesmen for whom the marketing of the product is almost as important as the product itself. But the sheer pleasure of reading seems to be missing amidst all the hoopla surrounding modern literature. "I belong to a generation for whom reading books was a mild narcotic," he says, a bolt-hole from life's drudgery, sought out on a daily basis. By comparison, today's thinking person looks forward to escapist films and TV. Speed is of the essence, rather than the slow, contemplative absorption rates afforded by literature. Kesavan is aware that some authors pull strings in order to ensure that their delicate literary offerings don't get clobbered by critics, but he wonders, "Where's the pleasure in knowing you've engineered your own praise?"
In my opinion, the problem lies right there, in this issue of an author's satisfaction. I am reminded of the elderly and venerable writer who insisted that I meet him before reviewing his book. He must have guessed I wouldn't like it, because he said in so many words, "I hope you're not going to slash it!" I hadn't read his book at the time but his plea put me off reading or reviewing it. A limited freedom is no freedom at all when it comes to writing a critique. It seems to me that authors who make statements like the one quoted above don't recognise the pleasure Kesavan was referring to, in the same way that children who cheat at cards don't understand the pleasure of playing.
One reason, though, that writing is no longer considered any kind of game, is the large sums of money available to authors these days. Just as fine art has been hijacked by rich patrons, literature too, to some extent, has fallen prey to the manipulations of cynical financiers. Reviewers enter the picture only after agents, publishers and distributors have already sorted the winners from the losers, based almost entirely on marketability. If they had their way, the only books we'd read would be formula best sellers written by teams of smooth operators. Ambitious young writers don't realise that by undermining the authority of unbiased critics, they damage their own best chances of improving, maturing and becoming established over a period of years. Honest reviewers are like doctors who must sometimes recommend radical surgery. Their treatment may seem cruel, but in the long run it keeps the literary community alive and vibrant.
Cartoonist, writer and reviewer, Manjula Padmanabhan is the author of the award-winning play "Harvest". She can be reached at: marginalien@yahoo.co.uk
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